Define initial work?
When is the moment when asking for feedback about how something is build turns into telling someone how to build a game? They made that very clear in my eyes, and whether I like this or not isn't even important, I understand why they do it. You do understand the thing they are building is theirs right?
The definition of initial work is irrelevant to the discussion. There is no moment when asking for feedback about how something is built turns into telling someone how to build a game, it doesn't turn into that ever. Nobody has said that it does.
Please do explain how they have made it clear in your eyes? Yes, I understand that what they are building is theirs.
To me their position is not clear at all.
Frontier have said that this is not a democracy - it's their game and they change it / add to it as they see fit. That seems clear to me, hopefully that is a clear statement to you too. They are saying they will make the game as they see fit and player feedback is not going to be taken into consideration when making their game.
Frontier also regularly say that they read all our feedback, they want to hear from us and that they are listening to our feedback. This is also a clear statement and you can hopefully see that they are saying here that they are listening to player feedback, which directly contradicts what they said in the above paragraph.
Players have historically complained bitterly about some of the features/functionality in the game. Frontier have also taken that feedback into consideration and made changes to their game, which again directly contradicts what they said two paragraphs above.
That to me is not a clear stance at all. Please explain how it is a clear stance to you?
Why? What is unclear and inconsistent about asking for feedback and them determining themselves what to do with it?
Nothing is unclear about that. I never said there was. Of course any feedback at any point should still be Frontiers decision as to whether or not it is implemented. The unclear part is them saying that they are not going to make changes based on feedback and then they make changes based on feedback.
Just because I've given feedback, doesn't mean it's going to acted on.
Sometimes, even if a lot of people give certain feedback, doesn't mean it's the right thing to follow it.
Sometimes, a single piece of feedback might make a someone go "yes, that!"
Of course it doesn't mean that. Nobody is saying that it does. As I said above - feedback should always still be up to Frontier on whether it gets implemented or not. This discussion isn't even about that though. It's about how and when feedback is given and used by Frontier
IF they actually do want to take our feedback into consideration.
It is currently unclear as to whether or not Frontier do want to take our feedback into consideration so any discussion on how and when we provide feedback is pointless until their stance is made clear on whether they actually want the feedback so that they can take it into consideration.
If they don't want to take our feedback into consideration when making their game (which is what they have said) then they need to make that clear and stick to it rather than still asking us for feedback and making changes based on that feedback, when they have said that is not what they are going to do.